Hiccup stood alone, staring out through the heavy iron gate and trying his utmost to exhale butterflies. His fingers curled, straightened, and twisted against each other. He wanted his tools, thin wires and folded metals and the heat of a forge. There were designs to make reality, concepts to test, kinks to hammer out, and Hiccup would far rather be there than here, despite everything that rode on this moment, right now.
The obnoxious wail of an air horn cut through the dull, steady hum filling the air; Hiccup leaned forward against the gate and peered out and up, past the mesh of heavy chains and safety railings. A flurry of motion caught his sweeping gaze; Gobber, their mad weaponry and combat teacher, was draped half over the rail on the east side of the arena, furiously waving his noisemaker and grinning. Hiccup lifted a hand and waved a little. Gobber gave him a thumb up, a wink, and a shouted message which was, perhaps fortunately, lost to the ambient noise.
Hiccup’s eyes roved further through the crowd, vaguely recognizing other teachers, neighbors, even a few classmates whose tests were either finished or slated for tomorrow, but his search didn’t stop until it reached the largest seat, positioned directly across the arena and above the opposite gate.
And in that seat, Stoick the Vast.
Looking up at him, Hiccup was once again struck by the thought of the shoes he had to fill – not as a formal obligation, but as a silent, unspoken expectation.
Hiccup Haddock? Any relation to Stoick Haddock – Stoick the Vast? World-class Hunter, greatest Berk has seen in generations? Built like a stone wall. They say he once killed a Nevermore with his bare hands.
Then, upon the admission – wry and sometimes a touch defensive – that he was the man’s offspring...
An up-and-down glance. Eyes cataloguing his every feature, trying to bridge the gap between the mountain of a man and his scraggly sapling of a son. Measuring. Comparing. Never quite computing.
It made sense, Hiccup knew. Stoick could punch out an Ursa in one blow and wielded a war hammer which was, to put it diplomatically, an ode to the classics. Hiccup...well, maybe he wasn’t as traditional as most Berk hunters were known to be, but what he did worked for him.
Still, he desperately hoped he wouldn’t foul this up, and not least because he’d be dead.
Movement below the seat of honor caught the edges of his gaze, dragging it downward to the shuffling form behind the far grate. Matted dark fur ruffled against the metal as the creature shoved its blunt nose forwards, clawing at the welded barrier that stood between it and the prey it could see, hear, and smell, all around and above and directly before it.
Hiccup took a deep breath, puffing his cheeks like a blowfish before releasing the air. He licked his lips, double-checked his weapons, clips, and dust canisters, and fidgeted through the announcer’s incoherent spiel.
The floor of the arena split, long interlocking triangles of reinforced concrete and steel slowly grinding away. From below rose a complicated new floor, one set with an arrangement of walls to create a very tall, and very sturdy, maze. The entrances lined up flush with the opposing gates, and though the panels were bolted down – and together – Hiccup was familiar with the engineering: no two mazes were ever precisely the same.
Still, some things remained true: the center of the maze was more than likely a smaller arena to allow for a little more elbow room, should the participants value that and should they actually manage to meet at that point.
The air horn sounded off again. The gate creaked and hummed upwards, and just as Hiccup knew the general favored pattern for these maze designs, he knew that the Beowulf was also free.
He folded his left arm behind his back, wrapped his fingers around a handle, and felt the little clamps click into place around the notches cut specifically into his forearm bracer for this very purpose. An easy slide and lift detached Endeavor from its place on his belt.
Hiccup stepped into the ring
Stoick tracked the movements of both the Grim and his son with expert eyes – and no small twinge of worry, which he strove to hide in a demeanor which did his name proud. However isolated the enemy, however prepared the hunter, accidents could always happen, and it was impossible to forget just who was in the ring.
The Beowulf had immediately taken advantage of the opened gate to barrel forwards, slamming into metal barriers and working itself up into a tizzy with dead ends and walls even it couldn’t scale or tear through. It was thoroughly lost within a minute of entering the arena, howling and snarling its frustrated bloodlust to the crowd. Within another minute, maybe two, it would calm and begin to explore more deliberately, led by its nose around twists and turns, reminded by its own scent trail which corridors led nowhere and which it had yet to attempt.
That two to three minute window was always the trainee’s greatest advantage – their opportunity to reach the open middle ground first, to avoid being surprised around a blind corner or trapped in a cul-de-sac.
Hiccup knew this, Stoick was sure. His son, for all his penchant for elaborate machines, cogs and gears and sliding panels, had at least some understanding of strategy, and had been taught the various strengths and weaknesses of humanity’s age-old enemies at length.
And yet, when Stoick next sought him out...
The crowd was roaring. He knew this objectively, in much the same way he knew the sky was blue and his feet were under his body, moving him steadily onward. These things were immutable facts – they just weren’t relevant ones at the moment.
What was relevant was that the Beowulf was somewhere in the maze as well. The opposite side of the maze, most likely, but still very capable of reaching him at any moment, depending on how fast it travelled and what turns it took and how many dead ends it ran across. Grim were soulless, which didn’t necessarily mean the same thing as stupid, and if you gave a rat a piece of cheese as a goal, sooner or later it would sniff it out.
In that, the Beowulf had a definite advantage: a means, despite the pervasive cacophony and overall presence of humanity surrounding them, of tracking Hiccup down, whereas Hiccup had no such extra sense. And to be honest, Hiccup didn’t much care for the idea of dodging around corners, searching for yet hoping not to blindly run up against his quarry.
He preferred fighting things he could actually see coming, things he could in some way predict and control.
And so, instead of searching for the quickest way to the open center of the maze as his classmates had almost invariably done, Hiccup had set out with a rather different goal in mind.
A back to the wall meant no escape, but it also meant no one could sneak up from behind, and to channel an enemy down a sole possible path was to control them, if you could only take advantage of it.
The center of the maze had four possible entrances and exits.
It would be so much easier to cover just one.
“No, seriously, what is he doing?”
Ruffnut shrugged, the motion jostling her brother. He jostled right back of course, though neither of them were too inclined to take their fight to the next level. The events in the maze – though relatively boring so far compared to what they might have been – were too baffling at the moment to miss.
“Dunno. It’s Hiccup,” she replied, as though that answered everything.
“It looks like he’s waiting for the Grim to come to him,” Fishlegs replied from the other side of Tuffnut.
“Pff. Lame,” Snotlout butted in, leaning back against the bleachers and yawning for effect.
“No, he’s not just waiting.” Astrid leaned forward and narrowed her eyes in thought. “He’s luring it.”
“So, what, like fishing?” Tuffnut asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe more like trapping...except he’s using himself as bait.”
He had settled down for what could have been a long wait.
In the end, it was only a few eternal minutes before the Grim loped into view, snuffling at the walls, following the scent trail Hiccup had deliberately planted with trailing fingers. He waited, eyes closed, until the beast had come a little closer...and then just a little closer still...and then, as the Beowulf loomed high, high over him, stretching up to sniff at the bend of the corner...
A flick of his aura, and the little mechanical lizard at the entrance of the cornered dead end twitched. The movement caught the Grim’s attention – too late. One snap of a segmented tail turned the metal creature around. A green flicker touched the gritty powder spread beneath the Beowulf’s paws.
An explosion shook the walls of the maze and sent the lizard tumbling, half its tail gone. Hiccup reeled, braced himself against the wall at his back, and opened his true eyes to see his creation come skittering around the bend, hindquarters smoking and glass eyes glowing the same vivid green as his aura.
“Good job,” he told it. It only scurried up his leg and into a pouch at his hip, coiling efficiently and going still as Hiccup reclaimed the energy he had lent it.
A choked snarl rose from the entrance to his position. Grimacing, Hiccup raised his left arm, bracing it with his right and sighting down the silver body of Endeavor. His finger curled around the trigger.
The Beowulf appeared, smoke rising from still-burning fur and singed white protrusions. It snarled. Wavered. Tensed.
One. Two. Three. Aimed center mass, keyholed by the recoil so that the bullets struck body, shoulder, body. Three shots, three hits, each laced with more fire dust so that they burned holes through dark fur and flesh and more smoke rose.
Yelping, the Grim fell back into the steel wall. It shuddered, but held, and the beast lay twitching against it.
And the Beowulf exploded into a rage of claws and teeth, hurtling forward in a death charge.
There was no room, no time to aim. He stumbled back, firing uselessly over the monster’s bony shoulders, once and twice and his back was against the wall as the crowd roared, an ocean of sound beating down on his ears –
He didn’t realize he had pressed the switch until Endeavor’s wings sprung open, flying between his body and the Grim’s vicious claws. They screamed against the metal of Hiccup’s shield, pressing him further into his dead end. A white mask filled his vision, a bone white mask filled with bone white teeth.
He meant to reach for Inferno. Instead, his hand found coarse fur, and in his aura’s flaring attempt to protect himself echoed a desperate idea.
Pinned between monster and metal, Hiccup looked up into unnatural red eyes, and found them burning green.
Back off, he wished without meaning to, and the teeth and claws drew back. As his fingers left the fur, however, the green began to fade, bleeding red at the edges, and the snarl rose again in the silent Grim’s throat. Lunging, Hiccup gripped the beast firmly. This time, the trickle of shared aura was deliberate, and the green returned.
All at once, Hiccup became aware of a deep hush all around him, the kind of quiet which is as stifling and invasive as any clamor. He glanced up and around, glimpsing the upper tiers of spectators, all watching in that perfect wide-eyed silence.
What to do with a Grim under his control, though only so as long as he held contact with it?
He knew the answer. Endeavor’s shield-wings folded away and he raised the flat, bracer-mounted gun to the beast’s head.
Glowing green gave him pause.
That was his aura. That was him in there, and for a moment he saw himself through the beast’s own eyes, a wavering indistinct figure behind the barrel of a gun, until he shook the double-vision off and focused on the scene from his own true point of view.
Grim weren’t tamable, or trainable. It had already shaken off his semblance once; this couldn’t be sustained as it was.
Endeavor tilted away from the monster’s head and its glowing aura-filled eyes. It breathed raggedly before him, teeth nonthreatening flashes of white in a panting mouth, claws lax.
He couldn’t control something into peaceful compliance and then use that control to destroy it.
Stepping carefully around the creature, never releasing its arm, Hiccup moved behind its back, where he had plenty of room to retreat, to open up space not so easily breached by teeth or claws.
The grating snarl rose in a swift crescendo as the young Berkian backpedaled, holding Endeavor steady and taking Inferno in his free hand, just in case his final shot missed.
The Beowulf whirled, leapt, and crashed to the ground, claws stretching and scraping towards his feet even as the beast’s final breath grated in its throat, burning red eyes fixed on the human it saw only as prey.
The hush was broken by Gobber’s airhorn, but even that bowed to the pressure of the silence of a hundred spectators, wavering feebly away to nothing on the still air.
Hiccup stared at his first solo kill, stretched out across the concrete.
He never wanted to use his semblance like that again.
